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Ghost Images in Brian De Palma's Obsession

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Ghost Images in Brian De Palma's Obsession Ghost Images in Brian de Palma´s Obsession page. 79 Ghost Images in Brian de Palma’s Obsession Valentin Nussbaum Associate Professor, Graduate Institute of Art History, National Taiwan Normal University 現代美術學報—23 Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum page. 80 專題：藝術與電影 Abstract Among the numerous ghost stories that punctuate the history of cinema, Brian De Palma´s Obsession is one of the most compelling. Haunted by the idea of improving on Hitchcock´s Vertigo, the movie questions on many levels the belief in revenants. It is not by chance that Florence and the church of San Miniato al Monte are both the stage and setting of the pivotal scene of the movie: the“ resurrection＂of Michael Courtland´s deceased wife in the person of an art restorer named Sandra Portinari. This specific setting, as well as Sandra´s activity, seems to fit perfectly with Aby Warburg´s concept of survival and rebirth. Florence, as the cradle of the Renaissance, is the theatre where the rebirth of Antiquity took place historically, while the church houses the cult and belief in the miracle of the Resurrection. The“ remaking＂of the dead wife, Elizabeth, also happens in front of a pious image that reveals an older painting beneath its first layer. The discovery of a“ ghost image＂beneath Bernardo Daddi´s Madonna and Child further underscores the intrigue of the film as a metaphor for restoration or resurrection, becoming at the same time the mise-en-abyme of Brian De Palma´s art. According to the filmmaker, cinema is an artificial creation, a palimpsest, or a montage. The use of artistic contexts such as Renaissance Florence, Christian analogies, Dante's writings, and Hitchcock's movies add not between does and only reveal the fact that cinema is a montage; it becomes a perfect platform for addressing the paradox of cinematic creation as an illusionistic art of re-animation. These ideas about the artifice of cinema parallel the treacherous set-up in Obsession, which has been staged to deceive both the main character, Michael Courtland, and the spectator. — Keywords: animation, icon, montage, revenants, restoration Ghost Images in Brian de Palma´s Obsession page. 81 In a note for The Mnemosyne Atlas, Aby Warburg defined his project on the history of culture as a “ghost story for the very adult 1. ＂ For him, the rebirth of Antiquity that takes place during the Renaissance is not only a“ fairy tale,＂it is a story of revenants. As he demonstrated earlier in his 1902 study on the Sassetti Chapel, the“ghost story＂finds a specific resonance in the Florentine church of Santa Trinità. The whole setting stages the belief in apparitions and doubles in presenting the metaphorical lineage between Christ, Saint Francis, and Francesco Sassetti. (fig. 1). In what has been defined as an anachronistic“ montage＂(Didi-Huberman, 2002: 484- 486), the antique Bethlehem of the Nativity, the medieval Rome of the birth of the Franciscan order, and the Florence of the Medicis are simultaneously present (Borsook and Offerhaus 1981). The scenes depicted on the apse walls and main altarpiece all reference the idea of rebirth and survival, as in the miracle of Saint Francis, whereby the saint resuscitates or resurrects the mortally wounded son of a Roman notary (fig. 2). According to one of Warburg´s footnotes, this rare and unusual scene alludes to the personal miracle of the Sassetti family, namely the“ remaking＂of the eldest son Teodoro (Klapish-Zuber, 1987: 283-309)2 who was“ miraculously＂reincarnated in a second Teodoro, a child born only a few months after his death (Warburg, 1999: 232 , 252, n. 32)3. The issues of survival and reincarnation illustrated in the chapel´s paintings serve as a case study on the symbolic functions of painted images. Though deeply linked to the cultural context of the Renaissance, the concerns of these images are far from isolated. As proven by another example taken from Vasari´s Lives, the idea of“ rinascita＂(resurrection) is at the core of the ideology of the modern history of art (Didi-Huberman, 2002: 11; Didi-Huberman, 2005: 53-84). The frontispiece of the 1568 edition of the Lives (fig. 3) illustrates this concern concretely by using an iconography reminiscent of the Last Judgement –– namely a triple trumpet 1. “Vom Einfluss der Antike. / Diese Geschichte ist märchenhaft / to vertellen [sic]. Gespenstergeschichte f[ür] ganz Erwachsene.＂The note is dated July 2, 1929. Aby Warburg, Menmosyne. Grundbegriffe, II. 2. As demonstrated by Christine Klapisch-Zuber, it was common and a necessary duty at the time to “remake＂(rifare in Italian) the recent dead by giving his or her name to a newborn child. This symbolic nominal “reincarnation＂would in this respect conjure death and ensure the continuity and persistence of the lineage (Klapish-Zuber, 1987: 283-309). 3. “Might not [...] the miracle of Saint Francis´s return to life have some connection with the resurrection of Teodoro I, whose death in Lyons was so profoundly mourned by his family, in the person of Teodoro II?＂(Warburg, 1999: 252, n. 32). 現代美術學報—23 Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum page. 82 專題：藝術與電影 Fig. 1 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Episodes from the Life and Miracles of St Francis, 1479-85, Fresco, Sassetti Chapel, Santa Trinità, Florence. Fig. 2 Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Miracle of the Resurrec;on of the Boy, 1479- 85, Fresco, Sassetti Chapel, Santa Trinità, Florence. Fig. 3 Giorgio Vasari, Fronispiece and final page of the second editon of The Lives of the Best Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors... Florence: Giunti, 1568, woodcut. Ghost Images in Brian de Palma´s Obsession page. 83 resuscitating the arts and artists (Lugon-Moulin, 2005: 11-15). This visual premise also governs the narrative of the Lives. In the text, the emblematic figure of Giotto plays a key role, since, by“ inventing＂the living likeness, this Trecento painter initiated the revival of modern painting. Vasari comments“: He alone, although born among inept craftsmen, by the gift of God revived that art, which had come to a grievous pass, and brought it to such a form as could be called good. And truly it was a very great miracle that that age, gross and inept, should have had strength to work in Giotto in a fashion so masterly, that design, whereof the men of those times had little or no knowledge, was restored, completely to life by means of him＂(Vasari, 1976: 71). If the art of the Renaissance can be considered a perfect medium for conveying“ghost stories,＂yet another medium has taken the lead in modern times. As we will see, cinema is undoubtedly the medium of ghosts. Considered the equivalent of the conjurer´s art, filmmaking is deeply anchored in the nostalgia for the evanescent image. Numerous scholars have noted that cinema has become the privileged medium for the repetitive staging of re-animations, re-enactments and simulacra (Tomasovic 2006). André Bazin, for example considers this aspect of cinema in his essay on the Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945) as“ a basic psychological need in man,＂ and connects the new medium to older ones through its ability to embody life (Bazin, 1960: 4)4. Since the cinematic image repeatedly casts doubt on the veracity of figures projected onto the screen, it is at the same time the perfect machine for presiding over their survival. The issue of disappearance and reappearance, death and rebirth, is at the core of the treacherous activity of projecting and re-projecting images (Scheinfeigel, 2008). This can be attested by cinema´s ancestor, the magic lantern, whose principal fantasy, as promised by its demiurge developer Etienne Gaspard Robertson, was to make revenants appear (Castle, 1988: 31-37; Scheinfeigel, 2008: 34). Among the numerous examples of uncanny narratives that punctuates the history of cinema, Brian de Palma´s Obsession (1976) is certainly one of the most compelling, because it questions on many levels the belief in revenants. The movie tells the story 4. For a comment on Bazin´s “ontological＂approach, see Frodon 2011. Susan Sontag express a similar idea in her article Film and Theatre“: Movies resurrect the beautiful dead; present intact vanished or ruined environment [...]＂(Sontag, 1966: 32). 現代美術學報—23 Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum page. 84 專題：藝術與電影 of Michael Courtland, a real estate developer in New Orleans who suffers the double loss of his wife Elizabeth and his nine-year-old daughter Amy as the result of a fatal kidnapping. Aching to preserve their memory, he builds a mausoleum replicating the façade of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte on a parcel of land previously marked out to a major real estate development. Sixteen years later, while on a business trip to Florence, the widower revisits the church where he first met his wife. There, Michael encounters Sandra Portinari, an art restoration assistant who strikingly resembles his deceased wife. After a brief courtship, he decides to marry her in New Orleans, but she is in turn kidnapped on the day of the wedding ceremony. Compelled to prevent the reoccurrence of his tragic past, Michael does everything in his power to save his second wife, who in fact was complicit in a complex plot conceived by his associate Robert LaSalle. He finally discovers that the woman he is on the verge of marrying is his own daughter Amy, and that she had been raised and manipulated by LaSalle as a plot for revenge. We can infer from this narrative that one of its main themes resides in the “resurrection＂of Elizabeth through a lookalike, an episode that deliberately takes place in a highly significant setting.
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